(8/2019) Frederick County is poised for the future. We have exceptional schools, a safe community, a thriving economy, and a high quality of life.

Our challenge is to protect what we love about Frederick County, seize our opportunities, and embrace new ideas and innovation. That takes planning. With the help of community partners, I have developed a strategic plan to guide the second term of my administration. This plan builds on our accomplishments of the past four years and introduces new ideas to move Frederick County forward.

My four key priorities remain the same as they were during the first term: Education, Jobs, Seniors, and Community Needs. This term, I’ve added a fifth priority, Growth. These five topics are the areas people talk to me about all the time.

I want to highlight a few specific initiatives within each of the five priorities. You can reach the full list of goals online at www.FrederickCountyMD.gov/CountyExecutive.

Education

We know great schools lift our students, their families, and property values, and ensures our long-term economic prosperity through a well-educated and trained workforce. The strategic plan includes several major education initiatives. First we must ensure the best teachers are in classrooms to deliver desired educational outcomes. I am proud to have fully funded the four-year phase-in of a new pay scale for school system employees. This is a huge accomplishment! But our work is not done.

We need to identify adequate funding for public education, both for the day-to-day operating budget and for school construction. These two initiatives have been and will be a hot topic at the state level for the foreseeable future. The State’s Kirwan Commission is redefining education in Maryland with recommendations to increase funding in targeted areas, such as special education and students in poverty, while expanding pre-K and increasing teacher pay.

Over the four years of my first term, Frederick County increased funding per pupil by more than $700. Over the same four years, the State of Maryland only increased per pupil spending in Frederick County by $129. Clearly Frederick County is doing its part, while the state is falling behind.

On the school construction side, I continue to accelerate school construction because I believe every child deserves a seat inside a school building. I have made a record investment in school construction, more than double the prior two administrations. I am committed to funding the County’s share of school construction projects, and I expect that in the upcoming session there will be a "super-charged" school construction bill to increase State funding. In Frederick County, we are ready to seize this opportunity. Our shovel is ready, we have a long list of projects ready to go, and we are waiting for State funding to advance several projects.

I support innovation in public education, including the exciting changes to the Dual Enrollment program, which allows students to take college courses offered at FCC while attending their own high school. Last year nearly 1,000 students took advantage of dual enrollment, and soon students may even be able to graduate from high school while earning their associate’s degree at the same time.

Jobs

We know having a job is fundamental to having a high quality of life. My vision is for Frederick County employers to provide a diversity of jobs to ensure residents have the opportunity to work where they live. To make this a reality, we will implement our Growth Opportunities Strategy. We want to define who we are and how we want to be known, so employers see that Frederick County is a great place to do business. That means we will try to attract targeted new jobs, such as in the life sciences, where we’ve added an economic development specialist for just that purpose.

Frederick County’s agricultural heritage is an integral part of who we are as a community. So another goal is to help our farmers so that agriculture remains economically viable. In the spring, we surveyed the industry and I hosted an Agriculture Roundtable. We are now busy doing our homework to evaluate value-added agriculture opportunities like a malt house, or cheese production. You’ll hear more about this soon. We are also looking at how our Agriculture Preservation Program can be enhanced to preserve our strong ag heritage.

Seniors

By next year, there will be more people age 60 and older living in Frederick County than school-aged children. That’s why we launched a new Senior Services Division a year ago. The division’s goal is to engage, empower and equip our seniors to live their best life. Our initiatives are designed to improve access to health care, support aging in place with grace, and connect active seniors to jobs and meaningful volunteer opportunities. Specific programs include Meals on Wheels to provide nutritious meals, a strong caregiver support program, and home retrofits, so seniors can continue to live in the place they’ve called home for years. It also means being a dementia friendly community.

Community Needs

Frederick County offers a high quality of life, as well as safety and well-being for everyone who lives here. A key initiative is to sustain safe communities. One way we will do this is with the implementation of Next Generation 9-1-1. We will also continue to add public safety positions in fire/emergency medical services, police and 9-1-1. We’ve applied for a new federal SAFER grant to add 38 firefighter positions. And we are developing long-term plans for staffing and competitive pay.

Improving mobility/transportation options is something we heard over and over again. A key focus is finding options for rural transportation, and meeting the demand for paratransit for seniors.

Housing affordability continues to be a challenge for young families, millennials, and seniors, so providing housing options and leveraging resources for workforce housing is an important initiative. For example, we are dedicating part of our recordation tax for workforce housing, identifying land for workforce housing locations, and drafting bills to allow the building of small, affordable dwelling units with new houses so there are more options for more people.

Healthy living is another key initiative. We want clean air, water, and renewable energy options, such as the solar array we are currently constructing at the landfill that will provide power for seven county facilities. The coolest part is that this solar array will power up the chargers for our electric buses, so they are running on 100% renewable energy! No one else in our region is doing this. Frederick County is really leading the way!

A real community need is aggressively addressing opioid and substance misuse, providing hope and help, as well as prevention. By the end of this year, we will have detox services in Emmitsburg. Additional beds for detox are on their way to Frederick, as well.

Parks & Recreation add to our quality of life. We will continue to expand our parks to all areas of the county. The second phase of Utica Park will open by the end of this year. And we are looking for land in the northern part of the county for a new regional park.

Growth

All across the county, people tell me that we need to preserve what’s special in our communities as our population increases. My goal is to ensure that we preserve our rich history and valuable resources while we invest in communities and infrastructure. One initiative is to preserve the things we value and that give Frederick County its unique sense of place. I have already taken a step toward this initiative with the hiring of a preservation planner within our Division of Planning and Permitting. And I want to develop a rural historic district preservation program.

Perhaps one of the most important areas is to modify policies, regulations and laws concerning development to ensure that our community grows wisely. This includes updating our Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance, keeping our mitigation and impact fees up to date, and strengthening the Forest Resource Ordinance to ensure we stop losing forest cover.

We also need to expand broadband access. We receive lots of requests for rural broadband or internet, and it’s important to our rural areas. Frederick County has received a grant to study the feasibility of expanding broadband, and we are gathering proposals from vendors right now.

There is a great deal to accomplish in the next three and a half years! Fortunately, we have a strong group of people already hard at work turning these ideas into reality. Frederick County is able to accomplish amazing things because people care and are engaged. By setting our sights on education, jobs, seniors, community needs and growth, we will ensure a high quality of life, maintain our unique sense of place, have a thriving economy and a healthy environment.

Frederick County is poised for a bright and prosperous future!